On Becoming The Subject Of Spin

There are certain milestones in a blogger's blogdom, I'm sure you'll agree... the first post... the first comment... the first death threat... but today, I became aware of a new first - I have become the subject of a media campaign.

On the subject of the War On Terror boardgame, a new commentor, Willbar, had this to say:

Why should terrorism be any more taboo than the wholesale mass destruction of nuclear weapons ?? I say good on them for going for it ...

I have no problem with the response - I asked for opinions, and I got them. It seems like that was the general consensus anyway. No, what interests me is that, last night, I was viewed with half a dozen hits from The Evil Balaclava, the unofficial game forum.

A quick visit shows a bevvy of sites, blogs and pretty much anthing else on Teh Intrawubs that have commented on the boardgame - positively or negatively - as part of their "media war". Although I can't prove it, I'm pretty sure that the forum is the brainchild of someone with an interest in the game.

But it's not even that I'm annoyed about. Sure, it's devious, but everyone has vested interests these days, why shouldn't that include people releasing controversial board games? It's not like the Interwebs have ever changed someone's opinion of anything anyway - it's basically akin to shouting in a soundproof room.

The thing that truly annoys me - trivial or not - is that this is apparently "well reined in!":

They've started to go off topic a tad so to bring them back ...

Why should terrorism be any more taboo than the wholesale mass destruction of nuclear weapons ?? I say good on them for going for it ...

Conversation that dawdles outside the realm of the topic is a staple of Couch Culture. Scratch that - it's the essence of Couch Culture. If I reined in every topic that goes off-track, we would never have known about John Surname's hairy palms, would never have read Hotcakes' explaination of leetspeak, or had found out just how many people loved/hated Hey Dad!

In summary:

1. People are always looking out for their own interests. (But if you didn't know that, chances are you're not intelligent enough to be reading this.)

2. If you're going to use a bit of spin-doctoring, don't organise it in a publicly accessible forum.

3. I will not allow people to dictate how I run my blog!

Thank-you and good-night.